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Am Iddrisu baba Terkper 21yrs of age a UTILITY PLAYER currently free my uncle has a team Lenient Internationa fc a second div. in Ghana and we want to participate in the tournament...usifmoro123@ymail.com
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I wonder which international tournaments haven't left the taxpayer with a large bill -- and I don't think Poland did particularly bad in that regard. (I'm not competent to judge Ukraine's performance.)

The weekly "Polityka" had an intersting article last week showing that there are a lot worse examples of wasteful spending of EU subsidies in Poland than on the 4 stadiums built for the Euro 2012 -- such as a pharanonic train station in Łódź for a railroad link that might never see the light of day.

As a frequent traveller in Poland, I sometimes wonder whether the government got its priorities right, and the railroads are a good example for that.

A lot of major train stations have now been overhauled, such as most prominently in Wrocław and Katowice, but the tracks and trains are as bad as ever, allowing for average speeds of maybe 60-80 km/h on all but two of the large links. In my book, upgrading tracks first, then trains, and stations last would have made more sense.

And there are more such examples.

Governments usually don't spend as wisely when their own share in the financing is marginal, and the lion's share of a project's costs (gernerally upwards of 75 %) provided for by the EU.

We saw that in Southern Europe, and it is happening again now in Eastern Europe.

It's much the same story for the fall out from the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. It was a great party, preceded by many promises of great economic and infrastructural benefits. What we are left with is some creaking infrastructure built on the fly, contractors enriched on huge cost over-runs, an enormous public bill and beautiful stadiums that cost more to use than to demolish. FIFA dictates the terms, elected governments comply, we pay.

It is clearly visible reading the article and the comments that people are not thinking "outside the box." Euro 2012 cannot be looked at in isolation, a one off event. Instead, it is part of a much wider national strategy to rebuild national sports infrastructure, football in particular but not only. The biggest success of euro2012 is the implementation of this infrastructure into reality, i.e. from vision to practice. Prior to euro2012 there have been very little investment into Polish sports infrastucture with the result that what we had was 50 years behind western europe. So what were these investments, in terms of football?

1. approx 2400 state of the art heated, lighted, fenced football pitches have been built around the country for people to play football, called Orlik.
2. 6 very large stadiums of capacity between 35-60000 have built: 2 in Warsaw, one in Gdańsk, Wrocław, Poznań and Kraków. All these stadiums are now used by the main respective teams in those cities, with the National Stadium serving the national team. Other events also take place on these stadiums and they serve the wider community of those cities, i.e. have a role similar to museums or other places of interest. Unlike in other countries, the residents of those cities are very proud of them and they are not too big so will not have to be made smaller.
3. A vast number of smaller, approx. 15 000 capacity stadiums have been built across the country, for example in Rzeszów, Gliwice, Leszno, Gorzów, Lublin, Cracovia, Toruń, Kielce and Częstochowa, to name a few.
4. A year after the event there are still cities building stadiums, for example Lublin (motor,) Bielsko-Biała, Białystok, Tychy and Stalowa Wola.
5. Training facilities have been built up across the country.

But, outside of football the tournament has had a much wider impact on infracture as a whole, with many airports, roads, train tracks/stations being built or modernized.

So in my modest opinion, euro 2012 was one of the most successful competions, with pretty much everything built in use after the end of the tournament. Look at it this way, if it did not take place in Poland, all those things would not have been built and would not exist. Thats why most Polish people are satisfied with it, even if the Polish national team is, to be polite, absolutely useless. But with this new infrastucture, hopefully with time the national team will get better too.

Sport and feel-good celebrations is one thing, money which ultimately comes out of the the pockets of tax payers another. I won't knock the event, because that's essentially down to the players, punters and locals, but the "bill" not so much for the event as for what remains after the emotions have dropped is a completely different story which will be unravelling for years. Only already now we know from the bankruptcies and crumbling road surfaces that unacceptable "short cuts" were made.

Which crumbling road surfaces you have in mind, when you mention roads open for Euro 2012? It seems to me as another piece of propaganda.

Also, when you mention unacceptable "short cuts" - what do you have in mind? When there were construction companies willing to sign contracts with the govt for that amount of money, whose fault was to assume those "short cuts"? A lot of guilt for the bankruptcies goes to the construction companies themselves.

I thought the two countries came off pretty well when I watched the games on TV from this side of the Atlantic--it's tough to measure the benefits of something like that, but there's a positive impact for sure. All things considered, having a few stadiums that are too large (by 25% maybe?) isn't too bad of a consequence, as long as the countries didn't have to bankrupt themselves or starve the poor to make the tournament happen.

Here in Brazil we are seeing all kinds of waste, corruption and disrespects to poorer people, involving World Cup and Olympic Games.

In Sao Paulo, for example, we already had an old stadium, private, of Sao Paulo Futebol Clube, that could be perfectly refurbished and could attend all "FIFA Standards" of comfort and blablabla. Local authorities, from Mayor to President, agreed to build a new arena, in the middle of nowhere in Sao Paulo, just to please FIFA, the building companies and the most popular soccer team, the rival Corinthians. Of course, with no limits of public wealth usage. Actually, the building of this new stadium is reaching a sum around 1,5 BBRL, or around 650 MUSD. All promises about expansion of airports, mass transit transportations, investments on tourism and so are just a bunch of late repairs, paliatives and provisory expansions, with no effect in short time.

I believe the situation in Rio is even worse. There are lots of reports accusing State Governor and City Mayor of illegal evictions of poor communities around the "mobility jobs" done on old avenues, giving more space for real estate speculation (mostly the guys who helped those politicians to achieve re-election, by the way) and increasing the gap between social classes, moving poorer people even far from the center of Rio. Of course, stadiums being overrated, Olympic installattions being demolished and being rebuilt just for fun (of building companies), and existing issues like violence (of drug dealers and police), lack of healthcare and hospitals, pollution and all kinds of failures in infrastructure are being swept under the carpet of public propaganda.

That scenario can be perfectly extended to other cities that will receive World Cup matches next year. And that's why people around here has no more patience with politicians in a general way. In my opinion, protestings will continue.

What a load of crap. I lived one year in Brazil and Morumbee is one of the worst stadiums I ever went to. It could barely hold group stage games. Even after that they could not pay for the 650 m refurbshiments to hold those games. Corinthians stadium is fully private and you need to learn how to read before saying all that. Tax credits are not public resources - this money never existed in the first place.

Other than the unnecessary direct spend on 4 stadiums which are now white elephants and, as in other countries, will probably have to be dismantled or reduced in size, the Euro 2012 soccer championships did provide a timely boost to general infrastructure investment which Poland (and the Ukraine) so sorely lack. A modern, well integrated motorway/expressway and railways system is badly needed in Poland. Until the availability of EU funds there was little possibility of undertaking such major works. It's only the current Polish administration which is actually delivering on well over 30 years of plans and promises.

No doubt the investments could have been better implemented but then local experience of major construction projects was limited (zero in the State railways) so there was a steep learning curve and foreign owned construction companies took advantage of public tender "lowest bidder wins" to sign contracts which they evidently felt could be subsequently re-negotiated with what they considered to be an inexperienced and naive customer. But the Polish Ministry of Transport was absolutely right in maintaining "fixed price means fixed price", as per strict EU rules and controls on EU funded project spends. Corruption is not an issue here as the external and internal controls and audits are extremely tight.

If corporate managements are stupid or crass enough to think that EU public bidding for tender rules can be disregarded then they clearly need to learn the lesson the hard way. Alpine Bau, a pseudo Austrian company (actually owned 100% by a bankrupt Spanish parent corporation) evidently bid too low and suffered the consequences by going bust. Its projects in Poland were but a few of many. Some Polish construction companies have been in trouble and several have gone bust, primarily where their project partners were companies from southern Europe (Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal plus Ireland) all desperately seeking business at any price during recession in their own countries and all too often doing the work in a shoddy way. The Chinese tried (and failed) to gain a foothold by "buying the business" thinking they could operate in the same way as in China and Africa. Not so in the EU. Where the consortium partners are Scandinavian or German there have been very few problems.

Maybe bidding regulations need to be changed whereby lowest bidder and highest bidder both automatically lose (EU rules apply), but construction companies need to understand that fixed price means just that. As to the Ministry of Transport holding back financial guarantees, it's not surprising that they do so where construction projects have been botched by the contracted builders (it's enough to look at Alpine Bau's winning bids for examples such as a major motorway bridge in southern Poland where the designed suspension cables tolerance was 0.5cm and they built with a 20cm tolerance). As to the problem in the railway tunnel to Warsaw Airport, the accident happened because of human error (the track was switched as the train passed through the cross-over junction), not because of a construction problem.

So in all, The Polish Ministry of Transport could do better, particularly with the State railways which were hamstrung by decades of incompetent management (which didn't build a single kilometre of railtrack for nearly 40 years!) and refuse to allow bids for projects from companies which have a poor track record in Poland and elsewhere, but in general infrastructure investment is moving in the right direction: new highways and railways are being built.

Yes agreed, if you want to see what happends when "fixed price is not fixed price" check out the building of the Romanian highway from Braszowo to the border with Hungary. In 2003 the Romanian government awarded the contract for the construction of 415kn of highway at a price of 2.2 billion euro to an American company called Bechtel. Bechtel was contracted to complete it within 3 years. 10 years later, Bechtel had completed only 52km of the road, or less than one eith, but has already charged 1.4 billion euro, or two thirds of the total. On top of that Bechtel has many times come of the construction site claiming late payments by the Romanian govt. And just to rub it in, the govt there must pay 50 million euro in debts to Bechtel and another 37 million in compensation! American builders ehh?

Spanish infrastructure companies are technically among the best in the world ( see all the rankings related to this sector and you will see that five out of the top ten are Spanish and actually many of them are leading many of the biggest infrastructure projects around the world, for instance the enlargement of the Panama canal or the building of the high speed train from Mecca to Medina). Alpine was a disaster in the making before it was bought by a Spanish parent company. They had overspent in the former area of influence of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and very little could be done to redress the situation.

Spanish construction companies and their counterparts from Italy, Portugal and Greece have an appalling track record in the eastern EU. Projects where they have been project leaders have been over budget, delivered well past contracted dates and all too often shoddily built, needing replacement by competent replacement contractors from eg Germany or Sweden. What works in the Spanish climatic conditions doesn't work in Eastern Europe where winter-summer temperature ranges are as much as 70C. An example is Warsaw airport where what was built was well over two years late, well over budget and with so many problems that the Terminal 2 building had to be re-roofed by another contractor prior to opening. This is in complete contrast to Terminal 1 where the German contractor delivered to budget and timeframe and with very few quality problems. (The Spanish won the original tender for Terminal 2 on price alone). Unfortunately, as a result, Spanish companies have a rotten reputation in the eastern EU. And the other southern Europeans aren't any better.

Spanish construction companies and their counterparts from Italy, Portugal and Greece have an appalling track record in the eastern EU. Projects where they have been project leaders have been over budget, delivered well past contracted dates and all too often shoddily built, needing replacement by competent replacement contractors from eg Germany or Sweden. What works in the Spanish climatic conditions doesn't work in Eastern Europe where winter-summer temperature ranges are as much as 70C. An example is Warsaw airport where what was built was well over two years late, well over budget and with so many problems that the Terminal 2 building had to be re-roofed by another contractor prior to opening. This is in complete contrast to Terminal 1 where the German contractor delivered to budget and timeframe and with very few quality problems. (The Spanish won the original tender for Terminal 2 on price alone). Unfortunately, as a result, Spanish companies have a rotten reputation in the eastern EU. And the other southern Europeans aren't any better.

ChrisFrance, your story isn't complete. Don't forget, that before you build, you must design and engineer. Construction is the last 1/3 of the entire process, 2/3 of the work was done and that why Bechtel was paid for 2/3 of the work. Why was only a small bit of the work completed? Because the Romanian Goverment didn't want to proceed. It's a classic situation of a government biting off more than it can chew, Romania couldn't afford it but decided to buy it anyways. If you don't pay your credit card bill, the same thing is going to happen to you.

The article is a very nice read as it raises an important question: Was all that money really necessary? One important thing though, it is inaccurate to claim that Brazilians are protesting specifically because of the cost for 2014 World Cup (although it has its share as a factor). Rather, the reason came as a result of an increase in the price of public transportation tickets.
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Indeed, most countries want to use sporting events as a means to improve own image and attract tourists\investments. But most countries go for overkill, thinking that spending more money will likely result in proportionally higher benefits in the long term. History shows us it simply is not the case. These events mostly represent Potemkin villages, because most countries have unrealistic goal: be better than previous host. However, when in the end the big event is closed, so are the stadiums.

that's right!
from my window i can see olympic stratford park - london olympic disaster 2012 (sponsored, as sport events should, by mcdonald and coca-cola): a big hole in the middle of the borough that "will be beneficial for all of us"... one day perhaps :/

hell, aren't all those "big events" yet another occasions for huge corporations to get extra money from us in mask of philanthropist?
get some info about china as well, or wait for russian winter story - sport events were often a tools of oppression/exploitation, we just perfecting this method over time...

Long before it happened, we knew what to expect. After all, such football tournaments had already been held in countries like Greece and Portugal, and on top of that when in 2007 Donald Tusk and his "Civic" Platform got their grubby hands on the coffers, the outcome was/is a foregone conclusion. Today white elephants abound, but paying the full price, bankruptcies and all, is still ahead of us.

On the other hand, the actual event wasn't that bad, was it. Bears did not walk the streets, and bar a bunch of Putin's functionaries, it was a cheerful and friendly affair. Irish fans stood out, because even when drunk they manage not to go off key. And at least we were able to prove the BBC wrong: we're not a nation of racists and fascists. Then again, now with Tusk's popularity is in permanent and fully deserved decline, his new minister of the interior, Bartłomiej Sienkiewicz (as indolent and incompetent as all the rest), is again seeing fascists everywhere.

International Super Sports Tournaments like the World Cup and Olympics are a Bubble that has popped.

Instead of boons, they are now busts: too expensive, too many white elephant useless stadia, too much terrorist security risks, and too little long term benefit.
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Sarejevo within 10 years of hosting the Winter Olympics was a city under seige with snipers, concentration camps, and genocide.

The Winter Olympics in Vancouver was almost sabotaged due to the lack snow due to global warming. Air conditioning saved the Olympics.

Sochi last February was warmer than Beijing. Sochi is spending tens of millions in snow storage--who knew this would be a new required cost of hosting an Olympics?

I do not think Albertville, Grenoble, Albertville, Calgary, Lake Placid or Squaw Valley are active, vital global economic engine cities.
They are no different than any other out of the way mountain resorts.

Athen's Olympic games put Greece into catastrophic debt that lead to national default. It may take decades if not generations to clear.

The Barcelona Games similarly worsened the Spanish Debt that lead to the Economic Crisis.

Italy's Turin Games similarly worsened the Italian debt leading to the Italian bank crisis.

The last Olympics in America Atlanta and Salt Lake City were post bubble disappointments. Subsequent American proposals have been lukewarm rather than enthusiastic. 9/11 did not help.

However, the developing world in Asia like Seoul and Beijing are still optimistic in conducting the Games.

But Brazil seems overwhelmed and in crisis about the World Cup and the Summer Olympics.

Turkey in attempting to pursue policies to land the upcoming Olympics, is having a Pre-Olympic crisis.
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The worm has turned for the Olympics and International Sports Tournaments.
The Olympic Bubble has popped.
Winning the Olympic Games is no longer a blessing but a curse.

I'd be really interested to see the difference between the impact of summer versus winter Olympic games. Most of the busts you list above hosted winter games. Let's be honest, there's a huge difference in the people who participate in/attend/watch/host the two.